Happy Blue Bacon Day!

Gearing up fro St Paddy’s Day? Well you should know that The man associated with the raucous, green beer drinking, corned beef and cabbage eating Irish celebration that we know today probably wasn’t Irish at all. And the “Celebration”. Most likely it was a somber home day of worship.

In the 300 or 400 AD range Maewyn Succat or Patricius was probably born a Brit, or more accurately, a Roman Brit that was enslaved for a few of his teen years by the Irish then went back as a missionary later. This predates Stockholm syndrome by a lot.

As far as the celebration itself… Not raucous at all. Originally it was a restful family day of prayer and worship in homes that had never seen corned beef and cabbage and would have judged anyone harshly for drinking beer of any color. Bacon was the protein of the day and joy was found in abstaining from joy. The color blue signified that you were honoring the holiday until hundreds of years later when some Irish rebels in grass stained knickers became the cool kids in Ireland.

In short, if you want to celebrate an old school St. Paddy’s day, you’ll put on a giant blue roman helmet and sit quietly reading scripture and eating bacon while thinking about how much you miss your Irish slave masters.